Who Ya Gonna Call?

Sometimes, the work that I do is way less flashy than it is in the movies. People sometimes expect pyrotechnics and earthquakes. That’s just not how it works, though. I mention this because I had mentioned that I was doing a energetic cleansing of a building last Sunday, and I said that I was going to talk about it a bit.

There were no pyrotechnics. There were no earthquakes. There wasn’t poltergeist activity that left me dodging levitating furniture. It was a lot of me singing, praying, visualizing, and trying to communicate that it was time to leave the building.

Let me back up.

This building is an old mill building by a river that is now used by multiple businesses. From what I’ve gathered, the river plays a large part in directing certain spiritual energies and entities to this building, and the theme of a river doing this may be a reoccurring one. I know that the building was bought by another company in the mid 1800s, but I don’t know when it was built. It’s old, though. Being an old mill by a river gives it enough chance to have spirits of people who might have worked there, along with anything wandering the area that the river kind of pushed into there.

I’ve been in this building multiple times, and have always had the feeling that I was not alone. I could feel ghosts. I even tried to contact one once in a meditation class that was taking place there. I believe I did, but it was a long time ago and, as a lot of this work goes, I just wasn’t 100% sure.

Eventually, a friend who owns one of the businesses asked me to try and clear out the space. She was tired of the creepy feeling there, and was looking for a little good juju in the building. I agreed, with one caveat:

I’ve never tried to clear a building like that.

So, I checked in with my teacher for a little guidance, and we worked out a plan. She works a lot with BioGeometry, a system of dowsing and energetic working that was created by Dr. Ibrahim Karim. She helped me come up with something that I could place on the property to divert heavier, unhealthy energy that might be brought in via the river. So, I made a makeshift amulet of sorts out of a plastic pipe, marbles, and whatever else seemed like it worked. I know. It sounds odd, but I wanted to see how well it would work. I headed to the bank of the river to talk to it. There did seem to be a spot where weird energy was accumulating. Unfortunately, it was a sort of flood plain before the building. With the ground frozen, I couldn’t bury the amulet safely, so the next flood would wash it away. Instead, I placed it in a safe spot as close to the floodplain as I could put it, with plans to bury it late spring.

A week later was the day that I was to do the clearing. I woke up well before dawn, gathered my supplies, and headed out. My plan was to sort of ride the energy of the sunrise to help me clear the space. I arrived, felt around for light switches, and made my way to the center of the business that I was helping out. I set up my mesa, and sat to listen.

I could feel the spirits there watching me. I announced my plan as I gathered my drum and a bell and walked through the business, then the building at large. The place that I felt the most activity was the second floor. I was expecting to feel it in the basement, but it wasn’t that bad at all. Perhaps the amulet had already began its work. I drummed as the hanging bell rang, and I prayed for the space. I sang a little of a power song a medicine man once taught me when it felt really intense.

Returning to my mesa, I proceeded to try out a banishing ritual of the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. I have to say, I’ve had better success with it in the past than I did in that moment. I imagine it’s due to the fact that it’s not a ritual I often practice. I then broke out my mix of sweet fern and cedar to smudge the place.

I rarely use my charcoal incense disks, as they burn for a while, and I feel that using them is an investment of time. So, when I tried to light the one that I brought, my inexperience shined brightly. It might have been too old, it might have been incompetence, it might have been both. I couldn’t keep the damn thing lit. Without it, my herbs would not be producing the cleansing smoke I needed. Muttering to myself that I knew I should have made a smudge stick out of these herbs instead, I continually lit the herbs to produce a meager smoke. It was a failure. I also noticed that the sun was rising quickly, and that this building was BIG! Between the size, the age, and the amount of spirits in the place, I began to feel overwhelmed.

In the end, I focused mostly on the business I was there for. I really had wanted to tackle the whole building, though. I ended it with the Sphere of Protection ritual that I often use. That had a stronger effect than normal. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it uses elemental forces, along with energy from the planet, the cosmos, and a synthesis of those powers to bring balance. I could feel the balanced force (referred to in my tradition as the Lunar Current) moving through the beams of the building. That was the surprising success of that morning.

I recently revisited the building. The business does feel lighter, as does most of the building. There are still entities on the second floor, though. As someone who has taken on the responsibility of clearing this building, I want to try it again. I’ll go a little earlier next time, though, as well as figure out my smudging problem. It’s interesting that the biggest problems that got in the way were very mundane and boring. I’m okay with that.

I do have a little funny story to add to it, though. In the middle of the Sphere of Protection, I heard what sounded like a sudden hailstorm coming from the eastern side of the building. A little perturbed, I went to investigate, all while asking my spirit helpers to have my back. I opened the one door I had yet to explore to reveal….

A hopper for wood pellets. The sound was the pellets pouring into the heater.

And they gave me a little bit of a scare.

Next week, I’ll talk about some work I’ve been doing with personal boundaries, and some wisdom that I’ve found concerning them.

May your week be warm and enjoyable

-The Green Mountain Mage